On the final day of the WWF Desert Challenge, the participants rode 45km from De Hoop campsite back to the start point at Sendelingsdrift, cutting a line through the park from river bank to river bank.
October 2017
The Orange River is South Africa’s longest river, rising in the highlands of Lesotho and flowing for more than 2000km before reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay.
The Richtersveld has a way of warping your sense of perspective. In the amphitheatre, the cliffs told a story of millions and millions of years of geological upheaval, where a single human life is just a speck of dust in the wind. We were inside the mountain, inside the rocks themselves.
The leopard pauses in the sand next to a rock overhang, one front paw held aloft. It’s evening and finally becoming cooler. The leopard lifts its head and sniffs the air, then it carries on silently into the purple twilight.
On Sunday, when we flew into Sendelingsdrift, the Richtersveld unfurled below the plane – rows and rows of jagged, purple-black mountains with plains of orange and yellow in between.
Anyone who has been to the Ai-Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park knows how far away it is: easily a two-day drive from any major city in South Africa.